Originally Posted by
Homeyba
...You probably could have gotten away with the Ultegra FD on my Colnago or Calfee. They both have more traditional seat tubes and that knuckle has lots of room. I went through all those chain alignment issues with my tandem but even then they weren't as difficult as yours.
My problem was that I was using old 6500, 7700 series stuff which was designed when the smallest chain ring used on Shimano 130BCD road cranks back then being a 38t. Because of that the inner plate sits at the same height as the outerplate so they would shift from middle to big back and forth easily, and both would shift down to the inner but with that short inner plate they didnt reach down far enough to pick the chain up off of the 24. The SRAM designed for compact has an inner plate that sits significantly lower than the outer so it worked fine. I believe that any of the newer generation of FD's would work as well because they are designed for both compact and standard rings. Of course all of this could have been made easier if my frame would accept a clamp on FD, then I could have used the XTR FD I have sitting in a box.